If you’ve seen Tash, it was probably either in a coffee shop or opening for a rock show/festival—which is funny, because her sound isn’t very hard.  She compares herself to a chameleon who fits anywhere—not hard rock but not straight-up pop. You could describe it as a powerpop-alternative sound that would probably fare well in a college crowd.  Tash attributes being stuck in rock lineups to being in the Midwest. Her lyrics are too deep and in your face to fall into pop.

She developed her pretty voice in the shower and spent a year fighting shyness, and building courage, by going to the singer-songwriter circle at the Artichoke.

You probably won’t see Tash much in the near future, and if you do, it’ll be acoustic sets around town, with some of the older material. Right now she’s staying focused on recording some new songs in the studio. Tash working with five songs, some written up to five years ago, that she didn’t put on her two previous albums. Her self-titled first album was professionally constructed and mastered.  On the second album, Shine, she saved thousands by making the CD covers herself, out of the target paper from the shooting range they’d practice in.

“Shine was more of a collaboration,” Tash says, “Loaded with busy drums, hip-hop-dance-influenced bass rhythms (created by the punk guy), splashes of metal (by one of the best guitarist I’ve ever known), and topped with soaring lyrics that were vivid, abstract, yet hard-hitting once understood. The Shine project teetered on many genres, but never quite fit into any. That’s why we could play a coffee shop in front a church crowd, get played on rock radio, and sell many CDs to college kids.
I was once stopped by an eight-year-old girl who told me her favorite song was Pray. Later that day, a 60-year-old woman told me her favorite song was Pray—the same song that made rotation on two stations out of Oklahoma. It goes to show the music crossed many genres and ages.”

Tash Maloney blogs about music at nakedcitywichita.com. You can find the first albums for free at the Donut WHole, located at 1720 E. Douglas, or listen to some of her work online at myspace.com/tashmaloney.